Long awaited Spring arrived in Alabama on Saturday. Temps are in the 60's and remnants of the list ice storm are melting away. We have a solid week of rain in the forcast, then good weather to the horizon. Winter blew it's last blow.

Yes, sexual dimorphism can be quite striking in bird species. Female cardinals can have considerable red on them, but are as you say not as red as the male. If it was a cardinal, I suspect it was probably a male. Here's a redder female cardinal:

It also might have been a Summer Tanager:

I did not see it in flight. I do love watching the birds, but have very limited experience, basically the past two years, in trying to identify them. One of the things I have been looking for are binoculars with a built-in camera. Several brands of binocular have have cameras, but it seems at least some of those are just a camera attached to the top of the binoculars. What I am looking for would be something like an SLR camera that captures its image from one of the light paths and has a conveniently located release, so I could view and click the release at the same time.